Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Sudanese civil war began on the 15th of April 2023, when the Rapid Support Forces attacked Sudanese Armed Forces bases across Sudan, including Khartoum and its airport. The immediate trigger was a dispute over the RSF's integration into the regular army: the RSF demanded a 10-year timeline, while the SAF insisted on two years, and talks collapsed in April 2023 after RSF forces deployed near Merowe and refused orders to withdraw.
The two primary leaders are General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who commands the internationally recognized Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and General Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who commands the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group. Both men jointly staged the October 2021 coup before turning on each other in April 2023.
The Sudanese civil war has forcibly displaced 12 million people, with 3.5 million fleeing the country as refugees, making it one of the largest displacement crises in recent history. Half the population requires urgent humanitarian assistance, and 25 million people suffer from severe food insecurity.
El Fasher, the last major government-held city in Darfur, fell to the RSF on the 28th of October 2025 after a prolonged siege and a major offensive beginning the 11th of April 2025. Following the city's capture, estimates of the death toll from the massacre range between 60,000 and 150,000; the WHO reported more than 460 patients and companions were killed inside the city's last functioning hospital, and a UN investigator stated the atrocities bore the hallmarks of genocide.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is a Sudanese paramilitary group formed in 2013 by president Omar al-Bashir from the Janjaweed militias that had fought in Darfur since 2003. Al-Bashir placed the RSF under the command of Hemedti and gave it the formal status of an independent security force in 2017. The RSF grew into the tens of thousands and developed ties with Russia's Wagner Group while deployed in Yemen and Libya.
The UAE has been a key external supporter of the RSF. Despite international sanctions, the UAE was found to have shipped Chinese weaponry to the RSF, and in October 2025 the SAF recovered boxes of UAE-supplied arms, ammunition, and medicines from formerly RSF-held territory. The RSF primarily funds its operations through gold exports to the UAE.